Councillor Bert Chapman recently brought to my attention the continuing problems of increasing aircraft noise in the villages. Several residents are concerned at the effect that the expansion of low cost flights from Luton is causing. I took this matter up on your behalf with Paul Kehoe, the Managing Director of London Luton Airport.
In his letter to me he said “I can assure you that there have been no recent changes to Luton procedures or flight routes to account for any increased aircraft activity and therefore noise in that area. I would stress, however, that there are no standard routes leading to final approach for inbound aircraft.” He went on to state that takeoffs have to follow defined ‘Noise Preferential Routes’ until they reach 4,000ft to the west of the airport and sent me maps which show that Flamstead & Markyate are directly beneath their main westerly takeoff preferred route. He did explain though that this route, right over our heads, is only used when the wind favours a westerly takeoff. Hardly any consolation as he then went on to tell me that this happens on average 70% of the time! He explained that they are encouraging the use of quieter aircraft “through a strict penalty system”. I am suspicious of this from my experience of speeding penalties which I think are too often used to raise money rather than promote road safety. Finally, he reported “a dramatic reduction in the number of aircraft exceeding their noise limits in recent years, from 34 violations in 2001 to just 1 in 2004. So far during 2005 there have been no noise exceedances.” So, according to Paul Kehoe, there is no problem and you must all be imagining it. I have requested a meeting with him to take this matter further.
It would be very helpful to our case if we could quote facts of our own on the growing noise nuisance. This is an area where you can all help me by providing some real ammunition for me to use. We need to build up a case and to do this we need to keep a diary of aircraft noise incidents. I have arranged for a section to be put on my website, on the Flamstead & Markyate pages where you can simply enter details of an aircraft noise incident. A log of all reported incidents will be displayed there for you all to see and when we have built up a reasonable sized chronicle I will be armed and ready to take on the airport bureaucracy on your behalf. I would urge you all to visit the site and enter details of incidents as they happen. The web address for your local pages is www.mikepenning.com/search/flma.php . The incidents need to be reasonable. We do not want a record of every aircraft flying over our sky. Most of you have lived in the area for many years and you will know what is an and normal acceptable noise level. It is the abnormal or late night/early morning really noisy flights that we need to record. |
